He is regarded as the most famous atheist in the world but last night Professor Richard Dawkins admitted he could not be sure that God does not exist.
He told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that he preferred to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist.
The two men were taking part in a public “dialogue” at Oxford University at the end of a week which has seen bitter debate about the role of religion in public life in Britain.
Actually, this has always been his position. He has never said that he was absolutely certain God does not exist, just that the evolution of life and the cosmos makes God very, very improbable.
What makes God probable, even to people of science, is that there is no reasonable explanation for the origin of life. The claim that an exceedingly complicated perpetual motion machine built itself by accident requires great faith. It is much more reasonable to believe that a creator made it, rather than that it built itself by accident. That defies the laws of science. And life is an exceedingly complicated perpetual motion machine.
Darwin never proposed any mechanism for the origin of life. The notion that life crawled out of the primordial soup does not include any explanation of how that happened, given what we know about biochemistry, thermodynamics, probability, and quantum mechanics. Presuming such an accident occurred requires incredible faith that there is no creator. That’s just a fancy way of saying that Romans is right. We can see the creator in creation, and we have no excuse.
Yours in Christ, Jackie Keenan
Is anyone ‘absolutely certain’ about almost anything? Who thinks that it is simply impossible for them to be wrong on anything except the most basic of beliefs (like 1+1=2)?
If 6.9 out of 7 makes you an agnostic rather than an atheist, then I suspect that 0.1 out 7 (where 0 is utter certainty in God’s existence) also makes you an agnostic rather than a theist. Which helps Dawkins on two fronts – he can continue to claim that his hostility to faith and God doesn’t come from a settled conviction about God’s non-existence, simply a lack of belief in God’s existence (which is a nicer position to be in rhetorically), and he can claim that there are almost no true Christians – almost everyone is prepared to accept that God might not exist (however improbable they think that is) and so are also agnostics and hence reducing the size of the group of Christians considerably. Who thinks this way about almost anything? That you only believe something if you have come to the point where you don’t think you can be wrong about it?
I’m not impressed. It comes across as too-clever-by-half rhetorical tricks that make sure you win arguments by rhetorical maneuvers rather than truly pursue the truth of things. It’s college student stuff, that I don’t think is going to help New Atheism survive past the current generation of celebrity atheists.
I’ve always felt that agnostics are being more intellectually honest than atheists.
Jackie Keenan (#2) – you should take your argument back even further: i.e. – where did any of the elements (e.g. the ‘primordial soup’ come from)? One has to make a supernatural or magical statement either way. Option one is the universe always existed. That is quite magical. To then insist on everything flowing from pure scientific principle after that is very inconsistent and not a little dishonest. Option two is God has always existed and created the universe from nothing. That is more intellectually honest and consistent, it seems to me, because the reliance for the initial aspect assumes supernatural and unexplainable. Just my two bits.
The number of atheists and agnostics has almost doubled in the last 25 years according to George Barna. We need to do a better job of reaching them.
Jackie, you clearly believe what you write but it would sound incoherent to most atheists I know. I am Christian but evolution mostly makes sense to me. I agree with your last two sentences and others but your first sentence depends on what is considered to be “reasonable”. Your sentence “That defies the laws of science” is not true.
If you want to be persuasive you need to listen to more atheists.
#5 Note that I was not talking about evolution. I was talking about the origin of life, which has nothing to do with evolution and Darwin’s theory. Darwin only talked about species changing in response to the environment. He never proposed any mechanism for how life started. If you know thermodynamics, you must know that in a universe rigged to become more and more random, that the notion that a perpetual motion machine built itself by accident does defy the laws of science. If you are familiar with biochemistry, you would realize that there is no explanation for how the complicated systems came into being. Although this is only one simple part of the problem, one needs enzymes to split the DNA chains apart, and these enzymes are proteins. But it is not possible to manufacture protein without RNA, which is coded by a single strand of DNA. It’s a chicken or the egg proposition. But the sheer complexity of the smallest life form defies being explained by some sort of accidental assembling, even given the most favorable environmental circumstances.
It sounds incoherent to atheists, because most of them do not know enough to get it. It takes a lot of training in a number of areas of science to get it.
By the way, I gave up looking at blogs for Lent except on Saturdays and Wednesdays, so I am not answering in a timely fashion.
#5 Note that I was not talking about evolution. I was talking about the origin of life, which has nothing to do with evolution and Darwin’s theory. [b]My Bad.[/b] Darwin only talked about species changing in response to the environment. He never proposed any mechanism for how life started. If you know thermodynamics, you must know that in a universe rigged to become more and more random, that the notion that a perpetual motion machine built itself by accident does defy the laws of science. [b]You are distorting the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The 2nd law merely states that heat does not flow from a cold body to a warm body and it introduces the concept of entropy. It is nonsense to apply the second law to open systems. The surface of the earth or the bottom of the oceans has energy flowing in and out and is clearly not closed.[/b] If you are familiar with biochemistry, you would realize that there is no explanation for how the complicated systems came into being. [b]True, but for the same reason it is difficult to say what is probable or not.[/b] Although this is only one simple part of the problem, one needs enzymes to split the DNA chains apart, and these enzymes are proteins. But it is not possible to manufacture protein without RNA, which is coded by a single strand of DNA. It’s a chicken or the egg proposition. But the sheer complexity of the smallest life form defies being explained by some sort of accidental assembling, even given the most favorable environmental circumstances. [b]It is pretty amazing and I agree with you that even atheists need faith of a kind but to their way of thinking it is a gap in understanding not a contradiction.[/b]
It sounds incoherent to atheists, because most of them do not know enough to get it. It takes a lot of training in a number of areas of science to get it. [b]Do you care if they get it?[/b]
Dear John,
Life is still a perpetual motion manchine, and it still takes an incredible faith to assume that it came into being by accident. I hope you care if atheists or agnotics get it. If they could see that they are truly believing in something more incredible than a creator, it could help with that first step. I know. I was an agnostic and I thought for so long that science would explain things attributed to God. The very idea that such a belief took great faith helped me get to God the Father. The people in my present church helped me find God the Holy Spirit. But I had to almost die of Lyme disease to meet God the Son. It took 15 years and I was almost 54 at the end of that journey, so I think we should all care if they get it.